New Shawl on the Needles

I have been holding onto this fiber for a while...some of it sold, but it was a slow seller. Its name was Jester. It sort of reminded me of a Jester in the old courts. Red and gold, with a bit of purple and some green. All colors that could have been achieved using natural dyes. Well I finally spun the piece of it that was left (and I do have a bit more) and this is what I got.

This will be another spin and knit along shawl that I will work on for awhile - similar to one I did a couple of years ago. It is useful to show how colors will work up. The fiber is a 50/50 merino/cultivated silk top. I will probably range from that to some 80/20, and possibly add some bfl between colorways?? We'll see. The beauty of this is that the melange of it is what makes it wonderful. The unifying color(s) will probably be red and green.

I dyed 4 ounces yesterday that has some red, green, soft brown, and some gold in it. Somewhat different, but it will be nice when spun up. I am Navaho-plying the yarn, which makes it a 3-ply. It also allows me to get some solid colors in the yarn and play with the colors as I ply. The joy of this is that it is a project that is ultimately for me, not to provide a sample of work at shows, although it will end up there at times. I do like the stitch I am using and am working on developing a pattern that uses it for my lace-weight yarn. That will have a more detailed edging...the knitting of this shawl is such that it is relatively simple and mindless, but the colors keep my mind engaged - providing it with the eye-candy it wants!!

I was listening to the news yesterday and they were talking about a study that found that once you have named a color (or as a child have learned the name of the color) that color is then actually processed by the left side of the brain, where the center of language is. Until then, it is processed in the right side of the brain. The real purpose of the study was to determine if the language you speak affects a person's perception of the world. (They did neural scans of the brain as they did the study to determine which parts of the brain were active. As a result, they were able to differentiate between left and right brain activity.)

I can only imagine that language does affect your perception. For instance, it is my understanding that Eskimos have 17 or more words for snow - describing the different types. I probably only have 7 or 8 different ways of describing snow. I have more limited interaction with it, but give me a color and I can describe it in numerous ways. However, there is some of my interaction with color that I have no words for. Is it pre-verbal? or non-verbal? I think some of it is pre-verbal, it comes from my gut/intuition, not from a rational linear part of my brain.

The other thing I know about color is that it comforts me in many ways. It provides me with what I have described as eye-candy, but it actually feeds me in a soothing way.